Monday, September 10, 2007

Startup goes on to the web as WeGoHealth.com

By Ryan McBride

When Jack Barrette started MovingHealth Inc. in March, he seemed sure the venture would provide online tools to better inform health care consumers -- but he wasn't sure how. Now he may know, even if he isn't talking.

Barrette's Cambridge startup, which was seed-funded with $1.5 million from venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners in February, has launched a beta website and now goes by the name WeGo Health. The website, expected to offer health information screened by medical experts and volunteer reviewers, should be up and live sometime this fall.

The firm is among a growing number of web-based ventures in the Boston area looking to capitalize on the influx of people turning to the Internet for health information. Some aim to create online communities of patients or hubs for health care information in the hopes that commercial customers and advertising dollars will follow.

"Right now a lot of the value is in the power of the (online) community" created by these startups, said Luis Barros, executive director of the Center of Internet and Digital Medicine, a health care IT research, consulting and services firm in Boston. But he said it is not yet clear how profitable this type of venture would be.

Barrette, CEO of MovingHealth and a former executive of California-based online powerhouse Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Health site, declined to comment for this story. Yet company filings and its website, www.wegohealth.com, indicate its staff has grown from just Barrette to at least six people and its board of directors has two industry veterans.

Kenneth Novak, a MovingHealth board member and adviser at Cambridge's General Catalyst, was vice chairman of America Online Inc. and then held the same post with New York-based Time Warner Inc. after the merger of the two media giants. And George Bell, the second board member from General Catalyst, was chief executive of Upromise Inc., the Needham-based college savings network.

MovingHealth's staff now includes Ziv Yaar, vice president of product, who came from Internet consulting firm Molecular Inc., which has offices in Watertown; Giuseppe Tailbi, vice president of technology, who is the former chief technology officer of Boston's QuitNet Inc., a web-based provider of services to help people quit smoking; and Vanessa DiMauro, chief community adviser of the startup, who founded online social network consultant Leader Networks LLC of Winthrop.